How to manually lower Netflix's streaming bit rate

August 03, 2013

True story. Last night, while on an Amtrak train from Chicago to Detroit, I was trying to pass the time by watching Netflix on my laptop. Just one problem: The connectivity wasn't great between cities, so there were a lot of pauses while the stream buffered. What I needed was a way to downshift Netflix, to make it buffer at a lower bit rate. Yes, that would lower the image quality at the same time, but at least it would be more likely to play smoothly. As it happens, you can indeed change Netflix's buffer rate on the fly, while you're using the desktop (i.e. browser-based) player. All you do is press Alt-Shift and then left-click in the player window. In the pop-up Diagnostics menu that appears, click Stream Manager. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2045824/how-to-manually-lower-netflixs-streaming-bit-rate.html#tk.rss_howto